


Camera Shy

by TheOxfordEnglishFangeek (jadinacookie)



Series: Short stories from Cafe Rosetta & Chevalier Ink [2]
Category: The Mundanes (Queer Urban Magic Universe)
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Canon Queer Character of Color, F/M, Gen, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 11:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5867320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadinacookie/pseuds/TheOxfordEnglishFangeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rian finally gets something he wants from Eliot (and something he wasn't expecting).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Camera Shy

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place about 3 years before the current events occurring in the Mundanes verse.

Two years.  Two _year_ s Rian had been friends with Eliot and he had yet to get a decent photo of her on his phone to use as a contact picture. Oh he had plenty of photos but there was always something obscuring her face or she was looking away or, in what was possibly his favourite picture he had managed to get, she was hiding her face behind a customer’s dog she’d been cuddling at the time.  

Cute as it was however it was no substitute for a photo where he could actually see her face and that was what he was whining about to her as they nursed their third round of drinks that evening.  Eliot for her part was just looking at him incredulously like she couldn’t quite believe that this was something that warranted getting worked up over.

“Look, I know you don’t like having your photo taken, I get that, I’m just saying it’d be nice to have a picture where I can actually tell that it’s _you_.”  
  
“Ri, you see me practically every day, you know what I look like.  Why do you even need a photo?” she asked, sounding like she was trying not to laugh and when he looked across at she was smirking at him over the top of her glass.  
  
“Maybe I want to pine over your beautiful visage when we’re apart,” he said, Eliot’s answering snort of laughter enough to have him smiling back at her, pouting forgotten for the moment.  
  
“You’re full of shit, do you know that?” she said, propping her elbow on the table and her chin on her hand to smile at him.  
  
Rian spread his arms and sat back in the booth looking proud of himself.   “And you love me for it,” he countered, capturing his own drink and lifting it in a vague toast. “Proving once again that you have exquisite tastes.  Which is why it’s all the more unfathomable, given your great love for me, that you won’t see fit to…”

“Oh for fucks sake,” Eliot said with another laugh, cutting him off and reaching forward to grab his phone from the top of the table.  “If it means so much to you then I’ll do it.”  
  
“Wait, seriously?” Rian asked, not quite believing his luck as Eliot slid out of the booth and tucked the stolen phone in her pocket.  
  
“Yeah well, you were starting to look like a puppy locked out in the rain with all the pouting and I’m not totally heartless,” she said, leaning down to kiss his cheek.  “I’ll be right back, you get another round in ‘kay?”  
  
“You got it,” he said with a grin, managing to catch hold of a waitress’s attention as Eliot weaved her way through the bar towards the ladies room.  
  
By the time she made it back to their table, the waitress had just dropped off their order and he was fishing one of the ice cubes out of his drink to crunch between his teeth.  
  
“You know that’s meant to be a sign of sexual frustration,” she said lightly, holding his phone out to him as she sat back down and giggling at his haste to take it from her without even a suggestive eyebrow in answer to her statement. His excited grin dimmed slightly when he found the photo she had taken however, confusion pulling his brows together.    
  
“El, this picture is like 90% forehead,” he said, looking up to meet the entirely unimpressed face Eliot was giving him.  
  
“Are you saying you don’t like my forehead? Is there something _wrong_ with my forehead Ri?” she said, tilting her head to the side in a way that immediately made him nervous.  
  
“No, no, its a great forehead,” he replied, frantically backpedalling, his eyes flicking between her and the photo.  “I just would have liked, you know, having more of your face in there…”  
  
“I’m making eye contact and you can tell its me but hey, if that’s not good enough for you then I’ll get rid of it…”   She reached across the table as if to take his phone and Rian quickly pulled back, pressing it protectively to his chest.  
  
“No no, I wanna keep it.”  He glanced down at the screen of his phone, noticing for the first time that the photo was close up enough that he was able count Eliot’s eye lashes and he couldn’t help but smile.  “Thanks El.”  
  
She laughed and a moment later her hand came into his field of vision to curl gently around his wrist.  “You’re welcome Ri,” she said, voice uncharacteristically shy and when he looked up, her expression was as unguarded as it was in the photo looking up at him, eyes soft and her lashes impossibly long and dark.  His heart beat a little faster in his chest and the thought that he wanted to kiss her flew to the front of his mind.  
  
Straight away, Eliot’s eyes opened a fraction wider and Rian blushed, fully prepared to stammer out an apology but before he had the chance, she leaned across the small distance between them, stopping when her lips were just a hairs breadth from his.  “Never apologise for that Ri,” she said, breath ghosting across his lips as she smiled and closed the gap between them with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> This is The Mundanes Queer Urban Magic Universe, a open sandbox where writers are welcome to come and join us. Please come check out our blog to find out more about the rules of the 'verse and guidelines for writing in it, read shorter stories, see faceclaims, and find inspiration: [The Mundanes](http://themundanes.tumblr.com/)


End file.
